“We regret to learn that the little baby daughter of the unfortunate
girl who was murdered recently at Ash Court, Ninescore, Kent, under
such terrible and mysterious circumstances, is very seriously ill at
the cottage of Mrs. Williams, in whose charge she is. The local doctor
who visited her to-day declares that she cannot last more than a few
hours. At the time of going to press the nature of the child’s
complaint was not known to our special representative at Ninescore.”
“What does this mean?” I gasped.
But before she could reply there was a knock at the door.
“A telegram for Miss Granard,” said the voice of the hall-porter.
“Quick, Mary,” said Lady Molly, eagerly. “I told the chief and also
Meisures to wire here and to you.”
The telegram turned out to have come from Ninescore, and was signed
“Meisures.” Lady Molly read it out aloud:
“Mary Nicholls arrived here this morning. Detained her at station.
Come at once.”
“Mary Nicholls! I don’t understand,” was all I could contrive to say.
But she only replied:
“I knew it! I knew it! Oh, Mary, what a wonderful thing is human
nature, and how I thank Heaven that gave me a knowledge of it!”
She made me get dressed all in a hurry, and then we swallowed some
breakfast hastily whilst a fly was being got for us. I had, perforce,
to satisfy my curiosity from my own inner consciousness. Lady Molly
was too absorbed to take any notice of me. Evidently the chief knew
what she had done and approved of it: the telegram from Meisures
pointed to that.
My lady had suddenly become a personality. Dressed very quietly, and
in a smart close-fitting hat, she looked years older than her age,
owing also to the seriousness of her mien.
The fly took us to Ninescore fairly quickly. At the little
police-station we found Meisures awaiting us. He had Elliott and
Pegram from the Yard with him. They had obviously got their orders,
for all three of them were mighty deferential.
“The woman is Mary Nicholls, right enough,” said Meisures, as Lady
Molly brushed quickly past him, “the woman who was supposed to have
been murdered. It’s that silly bogus paragraph about the infant
brought her out of her hiding-place. I wonder how it got in,” he added
blandly; “the child is well enough.”
“I wonder,” said Lady Molly, whilst a smile--the first I had seen that
morning--lit up her pretty face.
“I suppose the other sister will turn up too, presently,” rejoined
Elliott. “Pretty lot of trouble we shall have now. If Mary Nicholls is
alive and kickin’, who was murdered at Ash Court, say I?”
“I wonder,” said Lady Molly, with the same charming smile.
Then she went in to see Mary Nicholls.
The Reverend Octavius Ludlow was sitting beside the girl, who seemed
in great distress, for she was crying bitterly.
Lady Molly asked Elliott and the others to remain in the passage
whilst she herself went into the room, I following behind her.
When the door was shut, she went up to Mary Nicholls, and assuming a
hard and severe manner, she said:
“Well, you have at last made up your mind, have you, Nicholls? I
suppose you know that we have applied for a warrant for your arrest?”
The woman gave a shriek which unmistakably was one of fear.
“My arrest?” she gasped. “What for?”
“The murder of your sister Susan.”
“’Twasn’t me!” she said quickly.
“Then Susan _is_ dead?” retorted Lady Molly, quietly.
Mary saw that she had betrayed herself. She gave Lady Molly a look of
agonised horror, then turned as white as a sheet and would have fallen
had not the Reverend Octavius Ludlow gently led her to a chair.
“It wasn’t me,” she repeated, with a heart-broken sob.
“That will be for you to prove,” said Lady Molly dryly. “The child
cannot now, of course, remain with Mrs. Williams; she will be removed
to the workhouse, and----”
“No, that she shan’t be,” said the mother excitedly. “She shan’t be, I
tell you. The workhouse, indeed,” she added in a paroxysm of
hysterical tears, “and her father a lord!”
[IMAGE: images/img024.jpg
CAPTION: “The woman gave a shriek which unmistakably was one of fear”]
The reverend gentleman and I gasped in astonishment; but Lady Molly
had worked up to this climax so ingeniously that it was obvious she
had guessed it all along, and had merely led Mary Nicholls on in order
to get this admission from her.
How well she had known human nature in pitting the child against the
sweetheart! Mary Nicholls was ready enough to hide herself, to part
from her child even for a while, in order to save the man she had once
loved from the consequences of his crime; but when she heard that her
child was dying, she no longer could bear to leave it among strangers,
and when Lady Molly taunted her with the workhouse, she exclaimed in
her maternal pride:
“The workhouse! And her father a lord!”
Driven into a corner, she confessed the whole truth.
Lord Edbrooke, then Mr. Lydgate, was the father of her child. Knowing
this, her sister Susan had, for over a year now, systematically
blackmailed the unfortunate man--not altogether, it seems, without
Mary’s connivance. In January last she got him to come down to
Ninescore under the distinct promise that Mary would meet him and hand
over to him the letters she had received from him, as well as the ring
he had given her, in exchange for the sum of £5,000.
The meeting-place was arranged, but at the last moment Mary was afraid
to go in the dark. Susan, nothing daunted, but anxious about her own
reputation in case she should be seen talking to a man so late at
night, put on Mary’s dress, took the ring and the letters, also her
sister’s purse, and went to meet Lord Edbrooke.
What happened at that interview no one will ever know. It ended with
the murder of the blackmailer. I suppose the fact that Susan had, in a
measure, begun by impersonating her sister, gave the murderer the
first thought of confusing the identity of his victim by the horrible
device of burying the body in the slimy mud. Anyway, he almost did
succeed in hoodwinking the police, and would have done so entirely but
for Lady Molly’s strange intuition in the matter.
After his crime he ran instinctively to Mary’s cottage. He had to make
a clean breast of it to her, as, without her help, he was a doomed
man.
So he persuaded her to go away from home and to leave no clue or trace
of herself or her sister in Ninescore. With the help of money which he
would give her, she could begin life anew somewhere else, and no doubt
he deluded the unfortunate girl with promises that her child should be
restored to her very soon.
Thus he enticed Mary Nicholls away, who would have been the great and
all-important witness against him the moment his crime was discovered.
A girl of Mary’s type and class instinctively obeys the man she has
once loved, the man who is the father of her child. She consented to
disappear and to allow all the world to believe that she had been
murdered by some unknown miscreant.
Then the murderer quietly returned to his luxurious home at Edbrooke
Castle, unsuspected. No one had thought of mentioning his name in
connection with that of Mary Nicholls. In the days when he used to
come down to Ash Court he was Mr. Lydgate, and, when he became a peer,
sleepy, out-of-the-way Ninescore ceased to think of him.
Perhaps Mr. Lionel Lydgate knew all about his brother’s association
with the village girl. From his attitude at the inquest I should say
he did, but of course he would not betray his own brother unless
forced to do so.
Now, of course, the whole aspect of the case was changed: the veil of
mystery had been torn asunder owing to the insight, the marvellous
intuition, of a woman who, in my opinion, is the most wonderful
psychologist of her time.
You know the sequel. Our fellows at the Yard, aided by the local
police, took their lead from Lady Molly, and began their
investigations of Lord Edbrooke’s movements on or about the 23rd of
January.
Even their preliminary inquiries revealed the fact that his lordship
had left Edbrooke Castle on the 21st. He went up to town, saying to
his wife and household that he was called away on business, and not
even taking his valet with him. He put up at the Langham Hotel.
But here police investigations came to an abrupt ending. Lord Edbrooke
evidently got wind of them. Anyway, the day after Lady Molly so
cleverly enticed Mary Nicholls out of her hiding-place, and surprised
her into an admission of the truth, the unfortunate man threw himself
in front of the express train at Grantham railway station, and was
instantly killed. Human justice cannot reach him now!
But don’t tell me that a man would have thought of that bogus
paragraph, or of the taunt which stung the motherly pride of the
village girl to the quick, and thus wrung from her an admission which
no amount of male ingenuity would ever have obtained.
II.
THE FREWIN MINIATURES
Although, mind you, Lady Molly’s methods in connection with the
Ninescore mystery were not altogether approved of at the Yard,
nevertheless, her shrewdness and ingenuity in the matter were so
undoubted that they earned for her a reputation, then and there, which
placed her in the foremost rank of the force. And presently, when
everyone--public and police alike--were set by the ears over the
Frewin miniatures, and a reward of 1,000 guineas was offered for
information that would lead to the apprehension of the thief, the
chief, of his own accord and without any hesitation, offered the job
to her.
I don’t know much about so-called works of art myself, but you can’t
be in the detective force, female or otherwise, without knowing
something of the value of most things, and I don’t think that Mr.
Frewin put an excessive value on his Englehearts when he stated that
they were worth £10,000. There were eight of them, all on ivory,
about three to four inches high, and they were said to be the most
perfect specimens of their kind. Mr. Frewin himself had had an offer
for them, less than two years ago, of 200,000 francs from the trustees
of the Louvre, which offer, mind you, he had refused. I dare say you
know that he was an immensely wealthy man, a great collector himself,
as well as dealer, and that several of the most unique and most highly
priced works of art found their way into his private collection. Among
them, of course, the Engleheart miniatures were the most noteworthy.
For some time before his death Mr. Frewin had been a great invalid,
and for over two years he had not been able to go beyond the boundary
of his charming property, Blatchley House, near Brighton.
There is a sad story in connection with the serious illness of Mr.
Frewin--an illness which, if you remember, has since resulted in the
poor old gentleman’s death. He had an only son, a young man on whom
the old art-dealer had lavished all the education and, subsequently,
all the social advantages which money could give. The boy was
exceptionally good-looking, and had inherited from his mother a great
charm of manner which made him very popular. The Honourable Mrs.
Frewin is the daughter of an English peer, more endowed with physical
attributes than with worldly goods. Besides that, she is an
exceptionally beautiful woman, has a glorious voice, is a fine
violinist, and is no mean water-colour artist, having more than once
exhibited at the Royal Academy.
Unfortunately, at one time, young Frewin had got into very bad
company, made many debts, some of which were quite unavowable, and
there were rumours current at the time to the effect that had the
police got wind of certain transactions in connection with a brother
officer’s cheque, a very unpleasant prosecution would have followed.
Be that as it may, young Lionel Frewin had to quit his regiment, and
presently he went off to Canada, where he is supposed to have gone in
for farming. According to the story related by some of the servants at
Blatchley House, there were violent scenes between father and son
before the former consented to pay some of the young spendthrift’s
most pressing debts, and then find the further sum of money which was
to enable young Frewin to commence a new life in the colonies.
Mrs. Frewin, of course, took the matter very much to heart. She was a
dainty, refined, artistic creature, who idolised her only son, but she
had evidently no influence whatever over her husband, who, in common
with certain English families of Jewish extraction, had an
extraordinary hardness of character where the integrity of his own
business fame was concerned. He absolutely never forgave his son what
he considered a slur cast upon his name by the young spendthrift; he
packed him off to Canada, and openly told him that he was to expect
nothing further from him. All the Frewin money and the priceless art
collection would be left by will to a nephew, James Hyam, whose honour
and general conduct had always been beyond reproach.
That Mr. Frewin really took his hitherto idolised son’s defalcations
very much to heart was shown by the fact that the poor old man’s
health completely broke down after that. He had an apoplectic fit,
and, although he somewhat recovered, he always remained an invalid.
His eyesight and brain power were distinctly enfeebled, and about nine
months ago he had a renewed seizure, which resulted in paralysis
first, and subsequently in his death. The greatest, if not the only,
joy the poor old man had during the two years which he spent pinned to
an invalid chair was his art collection. Blatchley House was a perfect
art museum, and the invalid would have his chair wheeled up and down
the great hall and along the rooms where his pictures and china and,
above all, where his priceless miniatures were stored. He took an
enormous pride in these, and it was, I think, with a view to
brightening him up a little that Mrs. Frewin invited Monsieur de
Colinville--who had always been a great friend of her husband--to come
and stay at Blatchley. Of course, there is no greater connoisseur of
art anywhere than that distinguished Frenchman, and it was through him
that the celebrated offer of £8,000 was made by the Louvre for the
Engleheart miniatures.
Though, of course, the invalid declined the offer, he took a great
pleasure and pride in the fact that it had been made, as, in addition
to Monsieur de Colinville himself, several members of the committee of
art advisers to the Louvre came over from Paris in order to try and
persuade Mr. Frewin to sell his unique treasures.
However, the invalid was obdurate about that. He was not in want of
money, and the celebrated Frewin art collection would go intact to his
widow for her life, and then to his heir, Mr. James Hyam, a great
connoisseur himself and art dealer of St. Petersburg and London.
It was really a merciful dispensation of Providence that the old man
never knew of the disappearance of his valued miniatures. By the time
that extraordinary mystery had come to light he was dead.
On the evening of January the 14th, at half-past eight, Mr. Frewin had
a third paralytic seizure, from which he never recovered. His valet,
Kennet, and his two nurses were with him at the time, and Mrs. Frewin,
quickly apprised of the terrible event, flew to his bedside, whilst
the motor was at once despatched for the doctor. About an hour or two
later the dying man seemed to rally somewhat, but he appeared very
restless and agitated, and his eyes were roaming anxiously about the
room.
“I expect it is his precious miniatures he wants,” said Nurse Dawson.
“He is always quiet when he can play with them.”
She reached for the large, leather case which contained the priceless
art treasures, and, opening it, placed it on the bed beside the
patient. Mr. Frewin, however, was obviously too near death to care
even for his favourite toy. He fingered the miniatures with trembling
hands for a few moments, and then sank back exhausted on the pillows.
“He is dying,” said the doctor quietly, turning to Mrs. Frewin.
“I have something to say to him,” she then said. “Can I remain alone
with him for a few minutes?”
“Certainly,” said the doctor, as he himself discreetly retired; “but I
think one of the nurses had better remain within earshot.”
Nurse Dawson, it appeared, remained within earshot to some purpose,
for she overheard what Mrs. Frewin was saying to her dying husband.
“It is about Lionel--your only son,” she said. “Can you understand
what I say?”
The sick man nodded.
“You remember that he is in Brighton, staying with Alicia. I can go
and fetch him in the motor if you will consent to see him.”
Again the dying man nodded. I suppose Mrs. Frewin took this to mean
acquiescence, for the next moment she rang for John Chipps, the
butler, and gave him instructions to order her motor at once. She then
kissed the patient on the forehead and prepared to leave the room; but
just before she did so, her eyes lighted on the case of miniatures,
and she said to Kennet, the valet:
“Give these to Chipps, and tell him to put them in the library.”
She then went to put on her furs preparatory to going out. When she
was quite ready she met Chipps on the landing, who had just come up to
tell her that the motor was at the door. He had in his hand the case
of miniatures which Kennet had given him.
“Put the case on the library table, Chipps, when you go down,” she
said.
“Yes, madam,” he replied.
He followed her downstairs, then slipped into the library, put the
case on the table as he had been directed, after which he saw his
mistress into the motor, and finally closed the front door.
2
About an hour later Mrs. Frewin came back, but without her son. It
transpired afterwards that the young man was more vindictive than his
father; he refused to go to the latter’s bedside in order to be
reconciled at the eleventh hour to a man who then had no longer either
his wits or his physical senses about him. However, the dying man was
spared the knowledge of his son’s irreconcilable conduct, for, after a
long and wearisome night passed in a state of coma, he died at about
6.0 a.m.
It was quite late the following afternoon when Mrs. Frewin suddenly
recollected the case of miniatures, which should have been locked in
their accustomed cabinet. She strolled leisurely into the library--she
was very fatigued and worn out with the long vigil and the sorrow and
anxiety she had just gone through. A quarter of an hour later John
Chipps found her in the same room, sitting dazed and almost fainting
in an arm-chair. In response to the old butler’s anxious query, she
murmured:
“The miniatures--where are they?”
Scared at the abruptness of the query and at his mistress’s changed
tone of voice, Chipps gazed quickly around him.
“You told me to put them on the table, ma’am,” he murmured, “and I did
so. They certainly don’t seem to be in the room now----” he added,
with a sudden feeling of terror.
“Run and ask one of the nurses at once if the case was taken up to Mr.
Frewin’s room during the night?”
Chipps, needless to say, did not wait to be told twice. He was
beginning to feel very anxious. He spoke to Kennet and also to the two
nurses, and asked them if, by any chance, the miniatures were in the
late master’s room. To this Kennet and the nurses replied in the
negative. The last they had seen of the miniatures was when Chipps
took them from the valet and followed his mistress downstairs with the
case in his hands.
The poor old butler was in despair; the cook was in hysterics, and
consternation reigned throughout the house. The disappearance of the
miniatures caused almost a greater excitement than the death of the
master, who had been a dying man so long that he was almost a stranger
to the servants at Blatchley.
Mrs. Frewin was the first to recover her presence of mind.
“Send a motor at once to the police-station at Brighton,” she said
very calmly, as soon as she completely realised that the miniatures
were nowhere to be found. “It is my duty to see that this matter is
thoroughly gone into at once.”
Within half an hour of the discovery of the theft, Detective Inspector
Hankin and Police Constable McLeod had both arrived from Brighton,
having availed themselves of Mrs. Frewin’s motor. They are shrewd men,
both of them, and it did not take them many minutes before they had
made up their minds how the robbery had taken place. By whom it was
done was quite another matter, and would take some time and some
ingenuity to find out.
What Detective Inspector Hankin had gathered was this: While John
Chipps saw his mistress into the motor, the front door of the house
had, of necessity, been left wide open. The motor then made a start,
but after a few paces it stopped, and Mrs. Frewin put her head out of
the window and shouted to Chipps some instructions with regard to the
nurses’ evening collation, which, in view of Mr. Frewin’s state, she
feared might be forgotten. Chipps, being an elderly man and a little
deaf, did not hear her voice distinctly, so he ran up to the motor,
and she repeated her instructions to him. In Inspector Hankin’s mind
there was no doubt that the thief, who must have been hanging about
the shrubbery that evening, took that opportunity to sneak into the
house, then to hide himself in a convenient spot until he could find
an opportunity for the robbery which he had in view.
The butler declared that, when he returned, he saw nothing unusual. He
had only been gone a little over a minute; he then fastened and bolted
the front door, and, according to his usual custom, he put up all the
shutters of the ground-floor windows, including, of course, those in
the library. He had no light with him when he did this accustomed
round, for, of course, he knew his way well enough in the dark, and
the electric chandelier in the hall gave him what light he wanted.
While he was putting up the shutters, Chipps was giving no particular
thought to the miniatures, but, strangely enough, he seems to have
thought of them about an hour later, when most of the servants had
gone to bed and he was waiting up for his mistress. He then, quite
casually and almost absent-mindedly, when crossing the hall, turned
the key of the library door, thus locking it from the outside.
Of course, throughout all this we must remember that Blatchley House
was not in its normal state that night, since its master was actually
dying in a room on the floor above the library. The two nurses and
Kennet, the valet, were all awake, and with him during the whole of
that night. Kennet certainly was in and out of the room several times,
having to run down and fetch various things required by the doctor or
the nurses. In order to do this he did not use the principal
staircase, nor did he have to cross the hall, but, as far as the upper
landing and the secondary stairs were concerned, he certainly had not
noticed anything unusual or suspicious; whilst when Mrs. Frewin came
home, she went straight up to the first floor, and certainly noticed
nothing in any way to arouse her suspicions. But, of course, this
meant very little, as she certainly must have been too upset and
agitated to see anything.
The servants were not apprised of the death of their master until
after their breakfast. In the meanwhile Emily, the housemaid, had been
in, as usual, to “do” the library. She distinctly noticed, when she
first went in, that none of the shutters were up and that one of the
windows was open. She thought at the time that someone must have been
in the room before her, and meant to ask Chipps about it, when the
news of the master’s death drove all thoughts of open windows from her
mind. Strangely enough, when Hankin questioned her more closely about
it, and she had had time to recollect everything more clearly, she
made the extraordinary statement that she certainly had noticed that
the door of the library was locked on the outside when she first went
into the room, the key being in the lock.
“Then, didn’t it strike you as very funny,” asked Hankin, “that the
door was locked on the outside, and yet that the shutters were
unbarred and one of the windows was open?”
“Yes, I did seem to think of that,” replied Emily, with that pleasant
vagueness peculiar to her class; “but then, the room did not look like
burglars--it was quite tidy, just as it had been left last night, and
burglars always seem to leave a great mess behind, else I should have
noticed,” she added, with offended dignity.
“But did you not see that the miniatures were not in their usual
place?”
“Oh, they often wasn’t in the cabinet, as the master used to ask for
them sometimes to be brought to his room.”
That was, of course, indisputable. It was clearly evident that the
burglar had had plenty of chances to make good his escape. You see,
the actual time when the miscreant must have sneaked into the room had
now been narrowed down to about an hour and a half, between the time
when Mrs. Frewin finally left in her motor to about an hour later,
when Chipps turned the key in the door of the library and thus
undoubtedly locked the thief in. At what precise time of the night he
effected his escape could not anyhow be ascertained. It must have been
after Mrs. Frewin came back again, as Hankin held that she or her
chauffeur would have noticed that one of the library windows was open.
This opinion was not shared by Elliott from the Yard, who helped in
the investigation of this mysterious crime, as Mrs. Frewin was
certainly very agitated and upset that evening, and her powers of
perception would necessarily be blunted. As for the chauffeur: we all
know that the strong headlights on a motor are so dazzling that
nothing can be seen outside their blinding circle of light.
Be that as it may, it remained doubtful when the thief made good his
escape. It was easy enough to effect, and, as there is a square of
flagstones in front of the main door and just below the library
windows, the thief left not the slightest trace of footprints, whilst
the drop from the window is less than eight feet.
What was strange in the whole case, and struck Detective Hankin
immediately, was the fact that the burglar, whoever he was, must have
known a great deal about the house and its ways. He also must have had
a definite purpose in his mind not usually to be found in the brain of
a common housebreaker. He must have meant to steal the miniatures and
nothing else, since he made his way straight to the library, and,
having secured the booty, at once made good his escape without trying
to get any other article which could more easily be disposed of than
works of art.
You may imagine, therefore, how delicate a task now confronted
Inspector Hankin. You see, he had questioned everyone in the house,
including Mr. Frewin’s valet and nurses, and from them he casually
heard of Mrs. Frewin’s parting words to her dying husband and of her
mention of the scapegrace son, who was evidently in the immediate
neighbourhood, and whom she wished to come and see his father. Mrs.
Frewin, closely questioned by the detective, admitted that her son was
staying in Brighton, and that she saw him that very evening.
“Mr. Lionel Frewin is staying at the Metropole Hotel,” she said
coldly, “and he was dining with my sister, Lady Steyne, last night. He
was in the house at Sussex Square when I arrived in my motor,” she
added hastily, guessing, perhaps, the unavowed suspicion which had
arisen in Hankin’s mind, “and he was still there when I left. I drove
home very fast, naturally, as my husband’s condition was known to me
to be quite hopeless, and that he was not expected to live more than
perhaps a few hours. We covered the seven miles between this house and
that of my sister in less than a quarter of an hour.”
This statement of Mrs. Frewin’s was, if you remember, fully confirmed
both by her sister and her brother-in-law, Lady Steyne and Sir
Michael. There was no doubt that young Lionel Frewin was staying at
the Hotel Metropole in Brighton, that he was that evening dining with
the Steynes at Sussex Square when his mother arrived in her motor.
Mrs. Frewin stayed about an hour, during which time she, presumably,
tried to influence her son to go back to Blatchley with her in order
to see his dying father. Of course, what exactly happened at that
family interview none of the four people present was inclined to
reveal. Against that both Sir Michael and Lady Steyne were prepared to
swear that Mr. Lionel Frewin was in the house when his mother arrived,
and that he did not leave them until long after she had driven away.
There lay the hitch, you see, for already the public jumped to
conclusions, and, terribly prejudiced as it is in a case of this sort,
it had made up its mind that Mr. Lionel Frewin, once more pressed for
money, had stolen his father’s precious miniatures in order to sell
them in America for a high sum. Everyone’s sympathy was dead against
the young son who refused to be reconciled to his father, although the
latter was dying.
According to one of the footmen in Lady Steyne’s employ, who had taken
whiskies and sodas in while the interview between Mrs. Frewin and her
son was taking place, Mr. Lionel had said very testily:
“It’s all very well, mother, but that is sheer sentimentality. The
guv’nor threw me on my beam ends when a little kindness and help would
have meant a different future to me; he chose to break my life because
of some early peccadilloes--and I am not going to fawn round him and
play the hypocrite when he has no intention of altering his will and
has cut me off with a shilling. He must be half imbecile by now, and
won’t know me anyway.”
But with all this, and with public opinion so dead against him, it was
quite impossible to bring the crime home to the young man. The
burglar, whoever he was, must have sneaked into the library some time
before Chipps closed the door on the outside, since it was still so
found by Emily the following morning. Thereupon the public, determined
that Lionel Frewin should in some way be implicated in the theft, made
up its mind that the doting mother, hearing of her son’s woeful want
of money, stole the miniatures herself that night and gave them to
him.
3
When Lady Molly heard this theory she laughed, and shrugged her
pretty shoulders.
“Old Mr. Frewin was dying, was he not, at the time of the burglary?”
she said. “Why should his wife, soon to become his widow, take the
trouble to go through a laboured and daring comedy of a burglary in
order to possess herself of things which would become hers within the
next few hours? Even if, after Mr. Frewin’s death, she could not
actually dispose of the miniatures, the old man left her a large sum
of money and a big income by his will, with which she could help her
spendthrift son as much as she pleased.”
This was, of course, why the mystery in this strange case was so deep.
At the Yard they did all that they could. Within forty-eight hours
they had notices printed in almost every European language, which
contained rough sketches of the stolen miniatures hastily supplied by
Mrs. Frewin herself. These were sent to as many of the great museums
and art collectors abroad as possible, and of course to the principal
American cities and to American millionaires. There is no doubt that
the thief would find it very difficult to dispose of the miniatures,
and until he could sell them his booty would, of course, not benefit
him in any way. Works of art cannot be tampered with, or melted down
or taken to pieces, like silver or jewellery, and, so far as could be
ascertained, the thief did not appear to make the slightest attempt to
dispose of the booty, and the mystery became more dark, more
impenetrable than ever.
“Will you undertake the job?” said the chief one day to Lady Molly.
“Yes,” she replied, “on two distinct conditions.”
“What are they?”
“That you will not bother me with useless questions, and that you will
send out fresh notices to all the museums and art collectors you can
think of, and request them to let you know of any art purchases they
may have made within the last two years.”
“The last two years!” ejaculated the chief, “why, the miniatures were
only stolen three months ago.”
“Did I not say that you were not to ask me useless questions?”
This to the chief, mind you; and he only smiled, whilst I nearly fell
backwards at her daring. But he did send out the notices, and it was
generally understood that Lady Molly now had charge of the case.
4
It was about seven weeks later when, one morning, I found her at
breakfast looking wonderfully bright and excited.
“The Yard has had sheaves of replies, Mary,” she said gaily, “and the
chief still thinks I am a complete fool.”
“Why, what has happened?”
“Only this, that the art museum at Budapest has now in its possession
a set of eight miniatures by Engleheart; but the authorities did not
think that the first notices from Scotland Yard could possibly refer
to these, as they had been purchased from a private source a little
over two years ago.”
“But two years ago the Frewin miniatures were still at Blatchley
House, and Mr. Frewin was fingering them daily,” I said, not
understanding, and wondering what she was driving at.
“I know that,” she said gaily, “so does the chief. That is why he
thinks that I am a first-class idiot.”
“But what do you wish to do now?”
“Go to Brighton, Mary, take you with me and try to elucidate the
mystery of the Frewin miniatures.”
“I don’t understand,” I gasped, bewildered.
“No, and you won’t until we get there,” she replied, running up to me
and kissing me in her pretty, engaging way.
That same afternoon we went to Brighton and took up our abode at the
Hotel Metropole. Now you know I always believed from the very first
that she was a born lady and all the rest of it, but even I was taken
aback at the number of acquaintances and smart friends she had all
over the place. It was “Hello, Lady Molly! whoever would have thought
of meeting you here?” and “Upon my word! this is good luck,” all the
time.
She smiled and chatted gaily with all the folk as if she had known
them all her life, but I could easily see that none of these people
knew that she had anything to do with the Yard.
Brighton is not such a very big place as one would suppose, and most
of the fashionable residents of the gay city find their way sooner or
later to the luxurious dining-room of the Hotel Metropole, if only for
a quiet little dinner given when the cook is out. Therefore I was not
a little surprised when, one evening, about a week after our arrival
and just as we were sitting down to the _table d’hôte_ dinner, Lady
Molly suddenly placed one of her delicate hands on my arm.
“Look behind you, a little to your left, Mary, but not just this
minute. When you do you will see two ladies and two gentlemen sitting
at a small table quite close to us. They are Sir Michael and Lady
Steyne, the Honourable Mrs. Frewin in deep black, and her son, Mr.
Lionel Frewin.”
I looked round as soon as I could, and gazed with some interest at the
hero and heroine of the Blatchley House drama. We had a quiet little
dinner, and Lady Molly having all of a sudden become very silent and
self-possessed, altogether different from her gay, excited self of the
past few days, I scented that something important was in the air, and
tried to look as unconcerned as my lady herself. After dinner we
ordered coffee, and as Lady Molly strolled through into the lounge, I
noticed that she ordered our tray to be placed at a table which was in
very close proximity to one already occupied by Lady Steyne and her
party.
Lady Steyne, I noticed, gave Lady Molly a pleasant nod when we first
came in, and Sir Michael got up and bowed, saying “How d’ye do?” We
sat down and began a desultory conversation together. Soon, as usual,
we were joined by various friends and acquaintances who all
congregated round our table and set themselves to entertaining us
right pleasantly. Presently the conversation drifted to art matters,
Sir Anthony Truscott being there, who is, as you know, one of the
keepers of the Art Department at South Kensington Museum.
“I am crazy about miniatures just now,” said Lady Molly in response to
a remark from Sir Anthony.